I'd Come For You
by Mission to Marzipan
Summary: Set during LH. Alone, Annabeth had been fighting so hard and searching for so long and still hadn't found him. Enter Nico. A fic in which Nico saves Annabeth's life, Annabeth refuses to admit it, and which ends with stolen pizza and a friendly truce.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello all.**

**Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in. **

**This is not a sequel or a continuation of anything that has come before. I just reread LH and I was disappointed all over again by firstly the lack of Nico and secondly the lack of focus on the fact that Percy was missing. I mean, I know that we're probably going to hear something about it in The Son of Neptune (which I have already pre-ordered because I am nothing if not a loser without a life) but still. In the meantime, this is going to be a very small glimpse of a short period of time during the search for Percy, starring Annabeth and Nico (NOT in _that _way because, well, ew).**

**I'm guessing three chapters or less. I'm not saying it will be fascinating or enthralling, but it's one of those things that my brain is just telling me to write and so I must. ****Title is from a Nickelback song that made me go into montage mode while driving, the title and lyrics of which I do not own any more than than I own PJO, which belongs to Rick Riordan. **

****So if your ever lost and find yourself all alone  
>I'd search forever just to bring you home,<br>Here and now this I vow.****

****[...]****

****I'd fight for you  
><strong>******I'd lie, it's true  
><strong>******Give my life for you  
><strong>******You know I'd always come for you.****

**[...]**

**No matter what gets in my way**  
><strong>As long as there's still life in me<strong>  
><strong>No matter what, remember<strong>

**You know I'll always come for you  
><strong>**I'd crawl across this world for you  
><strong>**Do anything you want me to  
><strong>**No matter what, remember**

**You know I'll always come for you.****  
><strong>

**With that out of the way, let's go.**

**Marzipan.**

* * *

><p>Annabeth allowed a sigh to escape her lips as she sunk down into the water. Thankfully, she'd picked a motel where the bottom of the bathtub didn't make her flinch — providing she didn't look too closely, of course. It was a shame she couldn't say the same about the sheets but, hey, she was a demigod that had ran away aged seven and so had slept in plenty of worse places (storm drains anyone?) but at least a relatively clean tub meant that she could climb in a hot bath without worrying what she might catch.<p>

The hot water bit at the cuts and grazes in various stages of healing covering her body, remnants of the various scrapes she had been in since setting off from Camp with the intention of finding Percy. Her latest injury was going to hurt like a bitch in the morning she knew; she had been thrown backwards into a brick wall and her back already felt like one massive bruise, hence the hot bath to try and get some of the muscles to unwind. Hopefully, it would relieve some of the pain and she'd actually be able to move tomorrow without gulping so much nectar that she'd have to resort to standing in front of an open window again — in north Idaho, in midwinter — just to cool herself down.

Blowing air out of her nose she let her head sink under the water and screwed her eyes shut, beginning to gently run her fingers through her hair in an attempt to dislodge some of the grime. It fanned out and was floating on the water as she listened to her heart hammering in her head and the roar of the bubbles from her nose. When she came back up, she slicked her hair back and relaxed against the back of the tub, sighing again. It seemed like her life had been nothing but one big sigh lately — tired ones, frustrated ones, angry ones… All of them were appropriate given the fact that the wheels of her investigation were spinning and she was getting no closer to finding Percy, no matter how many monsters or other kinds of evil she vanquished along the way.

The hot water had set a cut above her eye bleeding again, another gift given by her latest monster slaying. She cursed and dabbed at it with the back of her hand; the blood had turned thin and diluted thanks to the water and ran right off her skin. It hit the water and immediately unfurled into a writhing red clump.

Closing her eyes, she listened to the sound of the tap dripping by her feet and the mysterious gurgling that was coming from the pipes and breathed in and out heavily, feeling her body begin to unravel in the water that she had ran as hot as she could bear. In some small way, being in the water, even just the bath, made her feel a little closer to Percy.

When she thought of him, a frown creased what had previously been serene facial features and her heart and stomach both gave an unpleasant lurch. The memory of their last exchange before they went to bed that night was still branded on her brain and wouldn't be leaving any time soon. If she knew that she'd have woken up in the morning to find Percy gone, there were so many extra things that she would have said to him — granted, it was mostly mushy stuff that she'd have been embarrassed to share, but had she known that he'd be gone the next day she would have told him just so much stuff about how much she loved him, the way he made her feel… It made her feel sick with nerves to realise that, if she didn't find him, she'd never get to say those things to him ever.

When she opened her eyes, desperate for some kind of distraction, she saw that the bathroom was full of coils and spirals of steam lazily bobbing around the room — the fan was apparently broken. The hot water, the relaxation, and the gentle drifting of the steam all around her had started to make her feel sleepy. Despite herself, she started to drift off, lulled by the small cocoon of peace that she had created for herself in the bathroom.

There was so much else she had to do — there were huge maps tacked to the motel room's walls, which was why the 'Do Not Disturb' sign was permanently on the outside of the door. She thought housekeeping would probably throw a fit if they saw the holes she'd put in the walls.

The maps were all dotted with colour-coded stickers depending on what they referred to — some were places that she had already been, some were places she was going to go looking for Percy. Others marked what she had gathered were monster hotspots — Detroit, for instance.

The GPS she had installed on Daedalus' laptop was a blend of computer wizardry care of an Athena-Hephaestus cabin alliance, Greek magic and just the general technology that made up the computer. A new addition was the new and not-so-attractive celestial bronze case in an attempt to shield it from any monsters that might pick up on its signal. It showed up a whole load of things, including monsters and some locations of interest that she would write into a schedule to check out when she could. She was convinced that it was slightly on the blink though — an enormous department store had randomly appeared in Chicago one day, hovering in and out of view on the map until it had one day disappeared altogether. Also, a mansion a little west of Chicago had lit up one day like a freaking beacon, even though Street View had revealed absolutely nothing out of the ordinary when she had looked. Then again, she thought, given the collaboration with the Hephaestus cabin, what could be expected? Yes, the cabin had managed to part-build, part-reactivate a very impressive and massive bronze automaton dragon, but the thing was just haywire and plain _nuts_ if you asked her.

Charts were on the opposite wall to the maps — looking over the seas in case the laptop revealed something out to sea that could be Percy. After all, that would be a pretty logical place to be given that it was Percy, but there was nothing really out of the ordinary to be seen there either. The nightstands were both stacked with books (as many as she'd dared to steal from the Big House's library and shoved in her newly magically-expanded purse) and on the dressing table was laid with her daggers and other weaponry paraphernalia — ankle and thigh holsters, gun oil for cleaning them and whetstones were all spread out of newspaper. The door was locked up as tight as a motel room could be; the deadbolt, the chain and that mostly-useless little pop-in lock on the doorknob were accompanied by a chair jammed up against it.

Call her paranoid, but she was a demigod — unexpected visitors were very unlikely to be friendly and, although it was incredibly likely that they could bash through the flimsy door with ease, she hoped that the locks would give her enough time to act to save her life.

She had been fighting monster after monster since she went looking for Percy — nearly everywhere she went on her search she had had to kill at least one monster and it was taking its toll. When she got out of the bath, she would have to rewrap the ace bandage around her wrist and, even with the hot water helping her back, she wasn't convinced that she hadn't cracked a few ribs today in that alley when she'd been flung against the wall and smacked down on top of a (thankfully closed) Dumpster.

Despite all of the monsters that she managed to kill, none of them had led her any closer to Percy and it seemed to have put her in more danger — she had managed to kill a dracaena that she'd been stalking by throwing a knife before it had seen her, but she wasn't entirely sure that she hadn't killed the monster already before that. Something weird was going on definitely and she wished she knew what it was.

Though it was incredibly tempting to find out what Chiron might know about it, she still felt stung from his rejection of her and his refusal to tell her the entire story, despite the fact that her knowing could have helped lead her to Percy, and had resolved not to contact him unless absolutely necessary. Even if she did contact him, there was probably nothing he would tell her anyway. Plus, they'd had an argument before she left — Chiron had advised her not to go alone to find Percy, which had pissed her off no end because it wasn't like she was incapable. Also, finding Percy was her mission — yes, most of the people at Camp (including, perhaps, some of the Ares cabin, whether they admitted it or not) wanted Percy back but she wasn't going to drag people out of the safety of Camp and then around on a dangerous mission that wasn't really theirs. This was something best done by herself and she was doing an okay job of it, providing the quality of her job could be judged by the monsters she had killed anyway.

Her face still felt grimy so she dipped herself under the water again, this time holding her breath so she could really hear the slow, rhythmic throb of her heart in her ears and let it soothe her. She worked to slow the beat even more, attempting to reach a place near a meditative state aided by the underwater silence she was wrapped in.

Meditation was easier, though, when something wasn't trying to kill you with a speargun like a fish in a barrel.

Even if, to be fair, she probably did resemble one right now.

Somehow she had known it was coming, call it good reflexes or ADHD or whatever, and had managed to twist to the side; the harpoon had lodged in the acrylic bottom of the bath and a rush of bubbles announced that her tub had sprung a leak. She burst up out of the water, gasping for breath, but in the few seconds it had taken to dash the water from her face and eyes something rushed her, coming at her through the steam. Reaching backwards, she tried to pull the spear from the bottom of the bath to use as a weapon but it was stuck tight, so she threw herself backwards into the water again and the trident that had been aimed at her chest shattered the tiles on the wall and sunk deep into the drywall beneath.

She lurched to her feet; it was a telkhine that had attacked her and the monster was trying to pull the trident from the wall. Balling her fists under her chin, she pivoted and snapped a roundhouse kick to the telkhine's snout. Fed up of fighting with Percy, Nico, Thalia or any other of the demigods that could summon a whole arsenal of special powers to help them, after the Battle of Manhattan she had started taking kickboxing lessons. As well as being good for self-defence, it was actually a pretty good outlet for any pent-up rage.

As the telkhine stumbled backwards into the corner, she sprang from the bathtub, the adrenaline masking all but the tiniest amount of protesting from her back and ribs, and grabbed a towel. Before she'd managed to wrap it around her, the door came crashing inwards, followed by a blur of black. When she realised it was human she yelped and wrapped the towel around her immediately — somehow a monster that she was about to send back to Hades seeing her naked was way, way better than someone she couldn't kill seeing the same thing.

As the steam escaped through the door and the air cleared, she realised that it was Nico, of all people, who had burst in. Indignant, she was about to protest about invasion of privacy when the telkhine grabbed him and swung him so hard he was lifted off his feet and slammed into the mirror above the sink. The glass spiderwebbed and shards feel at the same time he did; he landed hard face down on the counter with a thousand reflections raining about him. His sword had vanished.

Clutching the towel to her chest, she made a mad dash from the room, feeling a piece of mirror gash her foot open as she ran. She was running so fast she nearly overbalanced when she reached the dressing table and her knife and had to grab on to stop herself falling. _Why_ had she been so stupid as to not bring a weapon into the bathroom with her? Snatching up a knife she ran back into the bathroom — strands of wet hair plastered to her face and back — to find Nico up and fighting. He was standing on the counter now, dodging swipes with the trident that the telkhine had retrieved from the wall.

Annabeth ran at the monster, her knife raised, but he saw her coming and swept round in a full circle, hitting her in the side with its flipper tail and knocking her hard against the edge of the tub. Nausea immediately roiled in her stomach and black spots danced in front of her eyes at the pain from her already-damaged back and ribs. For a minute she couldn't move, but she had distracted the monster enough for Nico to leap off the counter with a large shard of mirror in his hand and plunge it into the telkhine's shoulder.

The telkhine reeled with anger, bucking and throwing Nico off. He sailed out of the bathroom and hit the wardrobes facing the door, splintering the wood and disappearing inside.

Annabeth had tears in her eyes still from the pain, but realised that her knife was still in her hand. She switched it to her left hand — not her preferred hand but the ribs on her right side wouldn't give her the movement she needed — and feigned semi-consciousness until the telkhine was standing above her. The knife flashed as she stabbed upwards, but the telkhine had twisted slightly, seeing her move, and the knife left a long gash in its flank but not one that proved fatal and resulted in monster dust. That was one of the things she disliked about knife fighting: sometimes, her blade was just too short to do the damage that a sword like Riptide could do.

Not that she'd ever tell anyone that of course.

"Find my sword!" Nico yelled at her, limping into the doorway and leading heavily on the frame while clutching at his shoulder.

"I'm good," Annabeth snapped, wondering if somehow Nico had read her mind about her weapon sometimes not being adequate.

"It won't work," Nico said through gritted teeth, but before he could explain just why the telkhine rounded on him and he scurried backwards into the hotel room. Annabeth heard a loud crash and managed to pull herself to her feet using the edge of the bath, even if it did make the black spots procreate right in front of her face, and, knife in hand, made her way into the main room.

Nico was on the floor next to the bed; the crash appeared to have been him demolishing the nightstand. The telkhine was looming over him with the trident, but Nico flashed a wicked grin that briefly transformed his face into a mirror of one of his father's crazed expressions, and reached out for the lamp that had fallen next to him.

Ripping the shade off, he smashed the bulb against the wall behind him, plunging the room into nearly total darkness, and jabbed the light into the gash Annabeth had made in the monster's side, letting go quickly. The bathroom light behind Annabeth dimmed and flickered and the whole room began to reek of burning blubber until a bright blue light flashed and the monster exploded into golden dust.

The silence afterwards was deafening and Annabeth's body sagged in relief, but Nico immediately jumped up and ran into the bathroom, almost knocking her flying. He came out with his sword, his face like some kind of madman, peppered with cuts as it was and puffy on one side from a yellowing bruise healing under his left eye.

"Get behind me," he barked, grabbing Annabeth's wrist and dragging her behind him.

"I will _not_," Annabeth said, yanking her wrist (luckily, Nico had grabbed the good one) from his grip. "I don't need you to protect me. What is your problem? How did you find me?"

"Shut up," Nico hissed, crouching in a battle stance.

Annabeth opened her mouth to give an acerbic retort, but suddenly she saw something that caused her mouth to snap shut in surprise. The monster dust on the floor had begun to swirl into little currents and eddies, as if propelled by a totally undetectable light wind. Slowly, the dust was lifted into the air and it started to take on the form of the telkhine again.

"What in Hades…?" Annabeth asked quietly, squinting at the phenomena and automatically stepping towards it to try and satisfy her curiosity.

"_Don't_," Nico bit out, pissed that he'd had to tell her more than once. She probably thought that he wasn't worth listening to, being just a kid, but gods dammit she was so _ignorant_ at the moment, which was so unlike her, and she needed to listen to him or get killed.

"Is it reforming?" she asked him. "Coming back?"

"No shit," Nico said sardonically, his lip curling at her.

"How?" she demanded, cocking her head as the golden dust outline began to get filled in as if the telkhine were being redrawn by the world's quickest painter.

"How about we try not to die first and then you can ask stupid questions later?" Nico suggested, swinging his sword in circles as he prepared to attack.

The telkhine reappeared suddenly, enraged. The regeneration had also apparently returned the speargun to him and he fired it at them; they both dropped to the floor and rolled out of the way and the spear pierced the mirror above the dressing table. Nico had rolled towards the monster and he slashed at it with his sword, which sucked the monster's essence in and killed it.

"_Now_ it's dead," Nico said finally, flopping down onto his back and staring at the ceiling, which had a rather attractive brown water stain on it and closing his eyes. He could feel Annabeth's glare radiating throughout his body and just let himself relax into the floor, anything to avoid having to face what would probably turn out to be her quite-considerable wrath.


	2. Chapter 2

**Here we go again, another chapter. Thank you very much to all who have favourited/reviewed this story and also those that have put it on alert. It means a lot to me. **

**This is mostly going to be Annabeth and Nico doing some talking for the rest of the fic. I've always been fascinated by the fact that the characters are children but act so adult (I've found it hard to imagine them any younger than they appear in the movie, for example, which may be bordering on blasphemy, I know) and I wanted to kind of explore that. **

**Fighting and war and getting hurt and being sad or alone and a whole lot of other misery are part of being a demigod as well as capturing the flag, drinking blue Cherry Coke and playing practical jokes on other campers and cabins. I'm just sort of trying to run with that.**

**Marzipan.**

* * *

><p>When the wrath of Annabeth <em>didn't<em> rain down on his head, he opened one eye curiously and turned his head to look at her, wincing at the pain it caused. This wasn't even his first monster execution today — his body had ached all over _before_ he had been smashed into a mirror and sent flying through closet doors. Now the adrenaline had stopped pumping his back was killing him and when he tried to move, pain shot through his shoulder as well as his ankle.

Annabeth let out a breath and closed her eyes. Her brain was buzzing, running at supersonic speeds as she tried to process everything that had gone on right in front of her. Suddenly, though, all of her thoughts ground to a juddering halt as she realised that she was standing in front of Nico in nothing but a towel that was _way_ too short and left nothing to the imagination. She flushed red, even though she wasn't normally a blusher, and cleared her throat self-consciously.

"I'm just going to… yeah," she said, clearing her throat again and walking quickly towards the bathroom, realising too late that Nico had kicked the door in and it was hanging by one hinge. She just didn't have the energy to try and close it properly behind her so, deciding that it gave just about enough privacy, she just hopped into the shower, finding that most of the water from her bath had soaked away through the hole in the bottom of the tub.

She couldn't stand the feeling that she was half-washed so, even though she needed answers, she quickly scrubbed her face, hair and body with the cheap, generic complimentary toiletries that all smelled like Vaseline. It helped calm her down as well, giving her time to bite her tongue to the point where she wouldn't kill Nico for barging in on her. She hadn't _needed_ him. She would have been fine. Where did he get the nerve from?

When she finished she dried off quickly, yanking her hair into a ponytail using a rubber band. She pulled on yoga pants and hesitated when she reached for a large t-shirt. It belonged to Percy and she couldn't resist quickly breathing in the scent before she slipped it on — as mushy as that was, she couldn't help it. She just missed him so freaking much.

The mirror was not her friend when she caught her reflection, although she had already known that she looked terrible. Not that she ever wore a whole lot of makeup, but she had been dabbing a lot more concealer on lately to try and disguise the fact that, sometimes, her face could look like five pounds of partially-ground beef thanks to all of the skirmishes she ended up in. Now the foundation and concealer had all been rinsed down the drain her face looked washed out and wan.

Mortals noticed her a whole lot more because of the cuts and bruises, which was bad, and looking like you'd been beaten up made it tricky to get a motel room just in case trouble was following you, even with the fake ID the Hermes cabin had provided her with before she left.

She continued to stare at her reflection the tiny little corner of the mirror that Nico hadn't managed to break with his ass — freaking pointy thing with no meat on it at all, no wonder it had done so much damage to the mirror — and discovered that she looked ridiculously pale, the dark smudges under her eyes incredibly pronounced and the cuts and bruises peppering his face livid under the nasty motel room bathroom lighting.

Absolutely nothing new there, then.

It wasn't like it was easy to sleep when you had a missing boyfriend and monsters on your tail constantly. She also kept having these dreams — they felt like they should have been demigod dreams but there was so much static she could hardly decipher anything. It was _frustrating_; she knew what these dreams were normally about and she could tell they were supposed to be about Percy but there was just _nothing_ she could make out. A Camp Half-Blood shirt that should have been orange but was purple, like the one that Jason had been wearing, and that freaking missing shoe, blackened and burnt and smoking, like the vision that had told her to go to the Grand Canyon.

Then there was the shamefully overwhelming urge to go home, to run straight back to San Francisco. She hated herself for it, for the fact that it consumed her late at night when she was thinking about Percy. All she wanted to do sometimes was drop everything that she was doing and just go home for a reason she couldn't place.

San Francisco was burned into her mind and despite the fact that she knew that she had to keep looking for Percy, that people were depending on her to find Percy, that she _needed_ Percy. Sometimes, all she could see was the Golden Gate Bridge and the fog rolling in and Mount Tamalpais in the background. She was deeply, deeply ashamed of it and was fighting tooth and nail to never give in to it but it felt like her heart was in that city and she couldn't help but hate herself a little for it.

Finally, dragging herself out of her reverie, she tried to storm out of the bathroom, cross-armed, to confront Nico and possibly rip him a new one, but the door got in the way and rather ruined the effect as she had to half clamber over it to get back in the room with him. He was just closing the door on someone and immediately set about relocking it again, even jamming the chair back underneath the knob, his paranoia apparently as great as hers.

"Who was that?" Annabeth asked, curiosity getting the better of her and keeping her anger at bay for the time being.

"The manager," Nico said, pulling a piece of blue chalk from his pocket and busying himself with it, tongue trapped between his teeth, scrawling a design on the inside of the motel room door and hesitating every few seconds in a way that told Annabeth he was doing it from memory.

"Noise complaints?" she asked, watching his design begin to radiate out from the centre.

"Yeah," Nico said. "Oh, and something about the room downstairs getting flooded or something? I'm guess you had a leaky bath."

"How did you get rid of him?" Annabeth asked.

"Uh… I used the Mist," Nico said, a little too uncertainly for her liking and suddenly concentrating extra-hard on the drawing.

"You know how to do that?" Annabeth asked, unable to totally hide the fact that she was impressed despite herself. She was still struggling with manipulating the Mist and she'd had way more practice than Nico.

"Uh… Well, no, not really," Nico told her. "I just sort of made it up. I mean, I've seen the weird hand stuff Thalia does. How hard can it be?"

He showed her what he'd done to the manager a couple of times; Annabeth thought it looked like he was a really lazy traffic cop directing traffic with one hand while he ate a Krispy Kreme with the other.

"Great," she said, snorting. "So the guy will be pounding on the door again in like five minutes?"

"Yeah," Nico said absently, finishing drawing and stepping backwards, dusting off his palms on his jeans while he surveyed his handiwork.

"What _is_ that?" Annabeth demanded, unable to keep the question in anymore.

"It's kind of like a magical protective thing against monsters," Nico said, cocking his head at it and praying that he'd done it right. "A guy from the Hecate cabin showed it to me."

"Well, they didn't show me," Annabeth said, frowning at it. "Are you sure it works?"

Nico glared at her over his shoulder, affronted. "Of course it does. I drew it, didn't I? And no one showed you because you were like all Rambo on us and vanished into the wilderness as soon as you could and decided you were too good for extra help."

"Who let you watch _Rambo_?" Annabeth asked. "That's a terrible movie."

Nico narrowed his eyes at her and folded his arms. "Bite me," he said, his age shining through as he jutted his chin defiantly and shoved hair out of his face.

"I'd only consider that if I had rabies or was otherwise contagious," Annabeth said quickly, smirking at him. "Now tell me: what is going on?"

Nico paused before he started speaking but lost the stare-off with Annabeth and had to continue. "Monsters have stopped dying," he said bluntly, still looking a little bit mutinous. "Something about the Doors of Death being opened or whatever. I did get sort of filled in on the prophecy but Chiron, well, he can talk and talk and talk and talk and I didn't listen all of the way to the end…

"But monsters and I don't think even the gods know what else are getting free passes out of the Underworld and my dad is going crazy about it because he can't stop it. I've never seen him this mad… Have you not noticed that the monsters you've killed don't stay dead?"

"I don't tend to hang around to watch what the dust does," Annabeth said, aiming for glib but ruining the effect when she sat down hard on the bed and put her head in her hands. Monsters that wouldn't die were bad news, plain and simple. In a kill or be killed situation, it didn't really work if only one side — her — could die.

"Yeah, well, maybe you should have done," Nico said harshly. "Or at least dropped an IM once in a while to let us all know that you weren't dead and then we could have told you."

"Are you taking a tone with me?" Annabeth asked disbelievingly, snapping her head up and glaring at him as digesting the information he had just given her fell way down on her list of priorities. "You are a _kid_,not my dad."

Nico glowered at her, balling his fists at the 'kid' barb. "Hey, I might be younger than you but I'm not the one cutting myself off from Camp and going off half-cocked around the country and ending up in some crappy backwater 'burb with my fingers in my ears going 'Lalalalalalalala' and pretending everything is all fine as I almost get killed in the bath. Don't you think _you're_ the baby here?"

"Oh cut it out. Please, you're _never_ at Camp. Don't try that one on me," Annabeth said contemptuously.

"We can't all over parents above the ground," Nico said a little miserably, folding his arms defensively. "I don't come to Camp much because it feels sometimes like I'm not wanted, cabin or no cabin. I'm a great big Underworld freak."

"Don't be such a drama queen," Annabeth said with a snort. "No one thinks you're a freak. Freaky, maybe, but not a freak. And there's no one who doesn't want you to be at Camp; they might even be a bit nicer to you if you weren't so frigging aloof all the time."

"I don't know what that means," Nico said shortly, frowning.

Annabeth sighed. "Mingle more," she urged, explaining to him. "Actually talk to campers instead of just being the brooding kid in black with a sword that scares the crap out of them because they've never seen anything like it before."

Nico looked at her warily. "But… I'm not very good at people."

"Trust me, you little runty robot, we've all noticed," Annabeth said dryly. "Now, what were you saying about undead monsters?"

"I thought I already told you," Nico said shortly, less willing to say anything at all to her after that last dig at him. Bianca's words echoed through his head:_ If you can't say anything nice..._ Huffily and petulantly, he allowed, "They don't die. The end."

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Look, you're going to have to be a little more specific than that for me okay? Vague does not work for me."

Nico wrinkled his nose at her, but saw that she wasn't going to back down until she had the information she wanted from him, even though he didn't have a whole lot to give because, hey, Chiron _could_ talk the hind legs off a donkey (was that offensive?) and you couldn't expect a kid with ADHD that had just drunk a suspiciously-purple grape soda to take all of what had been said in.

Mmm. Colourants, additives and sugar.

"It's like I said. Someone or something has opened like a back door to the Underworld that my dad can't close. Monsters don't stay dead and there's been a couple of big names going AWOL from the Fields of Punishment."

"So that telkhine will be back?" Annabeth asked, searching the room for her knife and finding it still clutched in her hand so hard her knuckles were white.

Nico shook his head. "No, not for a while. Stygian iron can keep them down because it sucks their essence straight back to the Underworld, but even I can't put them in the ground permanently. They just keep coming back for more."

"Hence the protection charm to take us off the radar," Annabeth said, nodding towards the chalk drawing.

"Bingo."

"When you say big names…" Annabeth asked, biting her bottom lip and waiting for him to say anything else than what she thought he meant.

"So far? Medea. Midas," Nico said shortly. "Apparently, today's bad guys were brought to us by the letter 'M'."

"So they're out on parole and can't be killed either?" Annabeth asked.

"No idea," Nico said. "As far as I know, no one has come across them yet to try."

Annabeth closed her eyes again, the information weighing heavily on her. "I hope Jason is okay," she said quietly.

Even though she _had_ wanted to kill Jason at first, she couldn't help but feel that his destiny was tied with Percy's and that he could lead them all to wherever it was her boyfriend was being held. With all of the new evil roaming around and him without his memories, she was wondering how well he'd hold up.

"Yeah, what's happening with that quest?" Nico asked, shoving all of Annabeth's stuff to the side so he could hop up onto the dressing table. The cheap piece of furniture shuddered and creaked ominously.

"They've got to find and release Hera by the winter solstice," Annabeth said. "Otherwise, a whole load of evil is coming to come out of the ground. You know, nothing all that new really."

"Why didn't you go?" Nico asked her, frowning. "I thought you would want to go and find Percy, plus you've got _way _more experience than Jason."

"We don't know that," Annabeth said. "Jason might have even more years fighting monsters than I do. He just doesn't remember. Besides, it wasn't my destiny or my path. I didn't want to go halfway across the country looking for something that wasn't Percy and anyway, I'm not exactly on friendly terms with Hera, am I?"

Nico conceded to her points with a tilt of his head. "Is it true they sent an Aphrodite kid on the quest?" he asked. "Because that's got to be some kind of a joke, right?"

"No," Annabeth said. "A Hephaestus kid and a daughter of Aphrodite both went with Jason."

"Oh, great," Nico said, curling his lip. "So they're all dead already then? Who thought it was a good idea to send a child of _Love_ on a mission like this? Love it just… gross. And lame. Chiron's judgement must be going in his very, very old age."

"She's not like the other Aphrodite children," Annabeth said. "She can charmspeak."

Nico snorted. "So can Drew. That will get her real far. Do you know Drew tried to charmspeak me once?"

"And me," Annabeth said. "It's amazing how quickly you can get her to shut up once you jam a knife under her chin though."

Nico grinned. "I cut a button off the dress she was wearing with my sword. She went crazy, cursed me and ran off almost in tears."

"Props for creativity," Annabeth said, inclining her head at him as a sign of respect.

"Thanks. Seriously though, back to some weedy Aphrodite girl on a quest? How is she going to find time to fight monsters what with all of the looking in mirrors and putting makeup on? When was the last time someone from that cabin went on a quest anyway? Also, when are they going to get cool powers? How about, like, an über facelift of death or something useful like that?"

Annabeth gritted her teeth so hard it would have made a dentist flinch. "I thought we'd cured you of the _constant questions_," she ground out, glaring at him. Nico only wrinkled her nose at her and looked puzzled, so she let it drop and continued. "She's different from them," she persisted. "Honestly, when she arrived at Camp I kind of thought maybe she was an Athena kid. I would totally have had her in my cabin."

"Really?" Nico asked, looking stunned. It wasn't every day that Annabeth respected a demigod enough to _want _them to be her sibling and share her cabin. "Well… maybe they've got a chance then."

"I really hope so," Annabeth said heavily. "I mean, I'm not having any luck finding Percy. I'm kind of starting to pin all of my hopes on them sorting out this entire mess and it somehow leading to Percy's reappearance."

"We're going to find him, okay?" Nico told her stubbornly. "So many of us are looking."

Annabeth managed to hold a sigh inside and looked to the floor. She wished she had Nico's optimism but after so many fights and battles and dead ends she was running low on the whole positivity thing. She almost felt sorry for Nico because when you got to be as old as her and had as many years doing this whole demigod thing then you got jaded real fast and that was something that was probably going to be in his near future.

She'd _literally _held up the sky and sometimes, at times like this when people were depending on her to do something like find Percy or stop an apocalypse or whatever she felt like she'd never shifted that weight from her shoulders. Despite her fake ID, she was _sixteen_ and newly a junior in high school, but instead of worrying about curfews and whether a particular guy liked her or even less shallow stuff like homework and papers, she was out here in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere (it had even taken her a while to remember that it was Idaho she was currently holed up in) trying to rescue her boyfriend and maybe save the world in the process.

It wasn't _easy _or _glamorous _or _exciting_. You grew up fast if you're a demigod but that's because you had to do things like run around Manhattan protecting the city from monsters and Titans while people you loved or cared for dropped left, right and centre around you and you got stabbed by jumping in front of a dagger meant for your soon-to-be-boyfriend.

It was difficult and dangerous but it was what demigods were born to do; fight monsters and do battle at the whim of immortal beings and destiny yanking on puppet strings and face the fact that every time they did so it might be the time they didn't come back alive.


	3. Chapter 3

**So… Probably should have called this **_**Pizza and Friendship **_**or something… That would be much better given that this is the end and, well, that's the way that it ends. The song is what inspired this, though, so that's the title we're stuck with even if it doesn't really fit anymore. Apologies.**

**Thank you to everyone who has read/reviewed/favourited this fic. It really does mean the world to me that you've taken the time to do so. I cannot tell you how happy y'all make me. I really, **_**really **_**hope that I've remembered to personally thank everyone that has reviewed so far via PM — if not, what are you waiting for? Get in my face and ask where the hell your thank you note is. I really try to reply to everyone but occasionally I do let very kind people slip through the cracks, which is the second sin I must apologise for tonight.**

**So here we go. Another fic done. This fandom will really not quit; its characters keep dancing on my brain when I'm trying to fall asleep, or showering, or driving, or doing the dishes and laundry and just… nearly always I guess. Not complaining however, because it brings me much closer to the wonderful people I've met through my fics in this fandom. **

**I cannot name everyone here, so **_**please**_** do not be offended if I leave you out (it does not mean at all that I don't love/appreciate you any the less) but recently I've received some exceptionally kind PMs/reviews (not just for this fic) that have left me a little speechless from ****Hedley is Amazing****, ****Loveliest Tragedies****, ****AHumanRobot****and** **Regina de Morte a.k.a. Mezza****. Thank you to them and to everyone else.**

**Marzipan.**

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><p><strong><em>PS: Uploaded the wrong document, for I am the king of all idiots. Once more, with feeling.<em>**

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><p>Doom and gloom began to settle over Annabeth like a cloud; despite her intentions she couldn't shift the heavy feeling. Why did everything have to be so <em>hard <em>all the time?

Oh, right. Because they were demigods. Duh.

"It would be easier to look if I wasn't getting constantly jumped by monsters," Annabeth muttered darkly. "It's like every corner I turn—"

"—there are more?" Nico finished for her. "Yeah, I'd noticed. We _all_ have."

"You too, huh?" Annabeth said. "I thought you looked like hell. You should really put a steak on your eye or something."

Nico wrinkled his nose. "Ew. Really? Why? That's gross. It's gone a little bit past raw meat therapy anyway," Nico told her dismissively. "I've just been popping ambrosia like it's M&Ms for ages. I'm surprised I'm not on fire already."

"Ditto," Annabeth said tiredly, suddenly feeling every injury she'd sustained since she started this quest protesting. "I barely have time to heal from the last round and then it all starts again."

"Everyone's getting attacked a lot more lately," Nico said. "The monsters must be able to sense that evil is on the up and up."

"That's why most people are staying inside Camp," Annabeth said. "Half of them wouldn't survive out here. So many newbies since the Battle of Manhattan. They're not trained up enough to cope. It would be a bloodbath."

"You're just giving reasons why you shouldn't be out there alone," Nico said. "Not exactly helping your case."

"I was doing fine without you," Annabeth snapped, anger flaring as she realised that this conversation was going to be entirely cyclical unless she broke out of it.

"You looked fine, all relaxed and, and _naked_ in the bath without a weapon anywhere near you," Nico said. "Really well. You let your guard down today. You could have been _killed_."

Annabeth gritted her teeth and bit out, "Once again: You are not my father so quit acting like it. You're a _child _and I have been doing this for way longer than you."

"Does your father give you tips on how to handle weapons and kill monsters?" Nico said angrily. "I never said I was trying to be your dad. I'm just trying to be your friend. A friend that knows what it's like to fight freaking monsters all of the time and who knows what it takes not to, you know, _get killed _out here. You're not the only demigod in the world fighting for their life you know."

"Did you just say we were friends?" Annabeth asked.

Nico frowned and looked a little taken aback; his bottom lip began to protrude slightly despite efforts to hide it. "Aren't we?" he asked her.

Annabeth closed her eyes and barely prevented herself from sagging in frustration — just in time, too, because she didn't think her ribs could have taken that right now. "I guess we're on the right path because I don't want to kill you as much as I did when we first met," she eventually said grudgingly with a shrug, her words induced entirely by the guilt that had been stirred by Nico's puppy dog-ness.

Nico scowled a little. "Fine then. But if I remember properly, you were doing something stupid and dumb then that nearly got yourself killed as well, huh? Is jumping off a cliff ringing any bells? Not even a doorbell? Because to me its ringing great big massive church bells," he said, aiming for a low blow.

Annabeth's face coloured. "Hey, that saved your life. The least you could do is been grateful and not turn around and throw it in my face."

Nico folded his arms. "Well, now I just saved yours. So we're even."

"How was that saving my life?" Annabeth protested, jabbing a finger at the carnage that had been the bathroom.

Nico clenched his teeth, sliding his jaw forward sulkily. "Were you not paying attention or something? Telkhine. Bathroom. Trident. Why won't you just accept that I stopped you being killed?"

"Because you _didn't_," Annabeth said shortly, turning her back on him and brushing mirror fragments from a small square Tupperware box on the desk and opening it. "I would have been just _fine_."

"If by fine you mean dead," Nico said. "Which you know is perfectly fine if you're me, but you're not. So..."

Annabeth couldn't get her retort out because of the particularly large square of ambrosia she had shoved in her mouth, so instead she snapped the box closed and tossed it hard at Nico, but he managed to catch it easily. He too took out a square and popped it into his mouth.

"How did you even find me?" Annabeth asked suddenly, frowning. "How did you know that I was here?"

Nico deliberately slowed down chewing the ambrosia to avoid answering; by the time he swallowed it, it was mostly liquid. "You know. Demigod stuff," he said cagily, suddenly finding the threadbare carpet fascinating.

"Nico?" Annabeth said warningly.

Nico sighed. "No getting mad, okay? Promise?"

"Don't be ridiculous. You're only saying that _because _I'm going to get mad."

Nico tried valiantly not to quail at Annabeth, who was standing glaring at him with her hands on her hips, but then he eventually was forced to cave. "I sort of put a detail on you," he mumbled quietly, still holding the conversation with the floor.

"You _what_?" Annabeth demanded, her voice rising into a shriek. "Explain. Now."

Nico winced. "If I tell you not to get mad again will that help?" The look Annabeth gave him was enough of an answer and he gulped. "I have a couple of skeleton soldiers that I... asked to follow some people. So that they stay safe."

"I think I would have noticed a skeleton solider," Annabeth said dismissively.

"You're talking to someone that can blend into the shadows whenever he wants," Nico said, a small glitter of triumph glinting in his eyes as his chin raised a couple of notches. "Do you think I'm dumb enough to leave a skeleton wandering around out in the open? They blend too. Plus you didn't even notice monsters were reforming. You're not exactly winning the Miss Observant pageant."

"Firstly, if you mention me and pageants in the same sentence again I will personally shove a winner's tiara so far up your ass you'll be spitting diamonds. So. How. Long?" Annabeth said tersely.

"Since you left Camp this last time," Nico said quietly.

"You've had me followed all over the country?" Annabeth asked, starting on the teeth grinding again. "Seriously Nico? What is wrong with you? I am _fine_. I can handle myself. I've been doing this since you were still in diapers." She cut him off before he could speak again with, "And _don't _be a smart aleck and tell me that you were last in diapers in the '30s because you know what I mean and I don't have the energy for that right now."

"I was trying to keep you safe!" Nico said to her, his throat bobbing. "Percy would have killed anyone that let anything happen to you. I feel like I owe him kind of and not letting you get killed just… I didn't want you to get in trouble, and..." He trailed off, the alarming feeling of hot tears rising behind his eyes causing him to screw his balled fists tighter to dig his fingernails into his palms and turn away from Annabeth.

Annabeth relented slightly, both because Nico had had good intentions — even if those good intentions involved having her shadowed (literally) and didn't extend to trusting her skills at keeping herself alive — and because he genuinely looked like he might cry. She wanted to be mad at him so badly; sometimes it was so hard not to shake him (he looked like she could actually pick him right up off his feet and make a good go of it, too) but the way he looked right now made her actually feel a little bit of pity for him.

A _very _little bit.

"So I guess you knew about the telkhine because of your little skeleton stalker, huh?" Annabeth said, as gently as she could manage while still being mad enough to throttle him into at least into unconsciousness if not death anymore.

Nico only nodded slightly miserably, only giving her a profile view of his face, and most of that was covered with hair.

Annabeth paused, cursing her good nature for what it was about to make her say. "Well..." she said. "Look. I guess, you know, you _did _have your helpful moments in there. Not that I couldn't have handled it by myself but it was nice to have someone have my back. Even if I didn't need it."

Nico turned to face her again; she was acutely aware of a single brown eye gazing at her through a curtain of dark hair. At least it didn't look wet anymore.

"So... you admit I saved your life?" Nico asked, an impish smile appearing on his face.

Annabeth narrowed her eyes at him, wondering if his sudden perking up meant that what had come before was just emotional blackmail and manipulation. If so, she had to hand it to him — he was _good _and it had really worked. It wasn't like she got taken in by it all the time.

"I admit nothing," Annabeth said truculently, still not able to work out whether Nico had been genuinely upset or not. "But you certainly didn't _not _help. Double negative aside."

Nico's smile widened and he shoved hair back out of his face. He would take what he could get from Annabeth — besides, from her, that was a pretty big compliment and perhaps even an allowance that what he had said might be true. Getting something like that out of her was usually like pulling teeth and hearing her say it almost made up for the whole scary tiara crack and having her chew him out.

"Cool," Nico said, happier now the atmosphere in the room had changed. "So what are we doing now? Going to sleep? Because I'm kind of hungry. Can we eat?"

"'_We'_?" Annabeth echoed incredulously. "I don't think _we _are going to do anything. Nice of you to drop by, Nico, but you did what you came to do. I have work to do."

"So do I," Nico said defensively, not liking the implication that what he had to do was any less important in the search for Percy and the quest to save the world. "But hey, no one said that had to be done on an empty stomach."

Annabeth rolled her eyes; she looked over at the bed, where she would dearly like to fall with her knives under her pillow and be unconscious for a few hours, but even though she was tired it didn't look too inviting. No housekeeping meant that the bed looked like a hellhound had been rooting around in it. Plus, at the mere mention of the word food her stomach had betrayed her by growling to remind her that it needed sustenance, so she groaned.

"Fine," she allowed. "Fine, okay. I could definitely eat."

"Pizza?" Nico asked immediately.

Annabeth cocked her head slightly as she wondered if that was what she actually wanted, but Nico had apparently take the tiny movement as assent and had vanished. She barely had time to roll her eyes and give a frustrated growl at his vanishing act before he was back in the room, a pizza box spotted with grease balanced almost expertly on one hand. Annabeth's stomach rumbled again, the sight of the cheesy goodness worming its way through the cardboard almost making her go cavewoman and clubbing Nico for the pizza.

"Oh gods, that smells good," Annabeth said as Nico walked closer to her. "You know what? I don't care if that's a torso in there; if it's covered with cheese and marinara sauce I'm going to eat it anyway." She caught Nico wrinkling his nose. "A little much with the imagery?" she asked.

"Just a little," Nico said. "Still kinda touchy about severed human body parts after a run-in with a Laestrygonian."

"Ah," Annabeth said, nodding. "I take it they didn't eat you because there was no meat and nothing to pick at but bones?"

"He didn't eat me because he got stabbed in the neck," Nico said. "By me. And I think I would taste plenty good."

"I'm not arguing with you about how you would _taste_," Annabeth said with a snort. "Mostly because the answer is obvious: terrible. Now, if you don't open that pizza box I will not be responsible for my actions."

Nico took the lid off the box and Annabeth's heart sank. The whole pizza was covered with anchovies. Not cool. Who _did _that? It was just plain nasty.

Still, it was hot and pizza-shaped despite the topping so she climbed onto the bed while Nico climbed on the other side and placed the box between them and grabbed a slice, setting about picking off the anchovies.

Once she was done she took a bite; she was so hungry that pizza had rarely tasted as good as it did right then, even if she was eating it in a dingy hotel room in the middle of winter with a companion she wasn't sure she could refrain from strangling if she had to spend a significant amount of time with. Plus, her body was demanding real food to soak up the ambrosia and a fight always left her starving.

As she finished her first slice — praise to the gods for the invention of the stuffed crust — she caught Nico also picking anchovies off his pizza and leaving them in the lid.

"Wait, why did you get anchovies if you don't like them either?" she asked, not waiting for an answer and instead sucking sauce from her thumb and reaching in for another slice. She set about the same process as before, culling anchovies left, right and centre before demolishing the second slice.

"Pizza roulette," Nico explained with a one-shouldered shrug. "Sometimes you win, sometimes you get anchovies. Or corn. Oh, Hades, even _tuna _once_._"

"What's pizza roulette?" Annabeth asked suspiciously, refraining from picking up a third slice in case it was something that was going to make her sick.

"Find the nearest delivery guy, take the pizza," Nico said, shrugging again as he sucked cheese from inside the stuffed crust, then abandoned the empty shell with his anchovies.

"Oh, wow," Annabeth said. "I wonder how you'd got it so fast. So there's no little voice that tells you that that's stealing and morally wrong?"

"Does a little voice tell you that using a fake ID is morally wrong?" Nico said with a smirk.

"Hey, at least I _pay _for the stuff I get with that ID," Annabeth said. "Don't drag me down to your level."

Nico snorted. "Look. When I'm hungry and I want pizza I'm not gonna wait, like, half an hour. Plus, if I steal their pizza, a family gets a free pizza with that thirty minute guarantee thing or whatever. It balances out."

There were so many cracks in Nico's flawed logic that thinking about them made her head hurt, but the pizza smelled so damn good and Annabeth realised that she barely cared if Nico had acquired the pizza by robbing an old lady after offering to help her cross the road and then abandoning her in the middle of the crosswalk. They chewed quietly for a few minutes, the piles of anchovies growing as they discarded them.

"I meant what I said," Nico told Annabeth eventually. "We will find Percy. We _will_."

"I know," Annabeth said, wishing she felt as confident as she sounded. She hesitated, rubbing her eyes with the very base of her palms where the joined the wrist because the rest of her hands were covered in cheese, sauce and the smell of anchovies. She sighed, lowering at hands. "And Nico? Thank you."

"For what?" Nico prompted, that devilish smile appearing on his face again.

"If you make me say for what, I'm going to force feed you the anchovies," Annabeth threatened, but then her voice softened. "But you _know_ why. And thank you for the pizza as well. And… for, well, you know… sticking around for a while, even though you are a pain in the ass."

Nico bit back a comment about how he wanted to get her to say it again so he could record it, even though it had practically burst out of his mouth as soon as she had finished speaking, just because it felt like it would have killed this moment dead if he'd said anything.

"You're welcome," he said instead, smiling and thinking about how it was nice to finally have someone _alive_ to talk to and a chance to rest for a while after round after round of exhausting monster slayings. Spending days and nights disappearing and reappearing all across the country searching for his cousin and, hopefully, the key to saving the world and helping out demigods who still thought celestial bronze was what the cool kids were using even though it didn't kill monsters anymore really wore you out.

Annabeth caught his eye and smiled too; suddenly, being in a motel room in the middle of winter in constant danger and searching desperately for a lost boyfriend wasn't altogether horrible anymore.

It was kind of amazing, really, what pizza and (on/off, love/hate) friendship could do for you when you felt like there was just nothing else out there for you in the world.


End file.
